The art of the deal

What can a person buy with $2.50 these days? A pack of gum? A ballpoint pen? Perhaps a single condom? Certainly not a gallon of gas anymore. But if you have a few bucks in your pocket Saturday, July 28, you can come away with some beautifully strange art, art supplies, CDs and who knows what else at Eugene Storefront Project’s (ESAP) Trailer Park Art Sale.

“One of the dilemmas we have here in Eugene is that it’s hard to get people to come out and buy art,” Marc Gunther says. “So we said, screw it, let’s have a real people’s art show.”

Gunther is one of ESAP’s three founding members, alongside Paula Goodbar and Peter Herley. He says that the Trailer Park Art Sale was originally Herley’s idea, and that this year ESAP is flooded with stuff that’s both bizarre and worth checking out.

“We’ve gotten a lot of really weird stuff donated for this show,” Gunther says. “I mean, someone came in and donated a ceramic chicken lamp.”

Oddities and art will be heaped en masse all over the ESAP gallery space, and the come-ups don’t stop there. Gunther says the Trailer Park Art Sale was originally going to be a barbecue sort of thing, but thanks to sponsorships and donations by Mezza Luna, Pizza Pipeline and Ninkasi, there will now be pizza and beer on hand. So for $2.50 you can get a slice of pizza, and for another $2.50 you can score some offbeat artwork. That’s a pretty good deal.

The bottom line is this is a cheap garage sale by artists, with beer and pizza. It also serves as a benefit for ESAP. Who wouldn’t want to stop by, see what there is to dig up and support local art at the same time? There’s even a rumor going around that, due to the excessive amount of art and art supplies that have arrived recently at ESAP, the gallery may open its doors on Sunday, July 29, as well.

About the Author

Dante Zúñiga-West is an Afro-Latino writer and outdoorsman known to some as “The Backwoods Blaxican.” He grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and now makes his home in Oregon. His fiction has been published in various literary journals. His novel Rumble Young Man Rumble is awaiting publication in 2014, on Black Coffee Press.